Confinement and Ethnicity:An Overview of World War II
Japanese American Relocation Sites

by J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, and R. Lord

Chapter 7(continued)Jerome Relocation Center

The relocation center was divided into 50 blocks
surrounded by a barbed wire fence (Figures 7.2 and 7.3), a patrol road,
and seven watch towers (Figure 7.4). The only entrances were from the
main highway on the west and on the backside (east) of the central area.
Only the residential blocks were consistent in size, but all of the
blocks were on a north-south grid, except for the warehouse block which
was aligned with the adjacent Missouri Pacific railroad.

There were over 610 buildings at the center. The
military police compound (designated Block 26), located north of the
main entrance, included 12 buildings (Figure 7.5). The administration
area (Blocks 24, 25 and 37) had 18 buildings; four of these, listed on
the WRA blueprints as "relocated houses," were likely used for staff
housing. The warehouse area (Block 37) had 21 buildings, and the
hospital (Blocks 47 and 49) had 16 buildings. Block 50, east of the
hospital, had four "relocated barns." Block 48, south of the warehouses,
was used for coal storage.

Figure 7.8. Young children at Jerome.(Gretchen Van Tassel photograph, Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley

The 36 residential blocks were located east of the military police and
administration areas (Figures 7.6-7.8). They lay within a rectangle six
blocks east-west by eight blocks north-south. The easternmost row was
noted as "wooded." Each residential block had twelve 20 foot by 120 foot
barracks, a recreation building, a mess hall, and a combined bathroom
and laundry building. Well houses were located in Blocks 23 and 39.

Three blocks (10, 21, 22, and 34) were set aside for
a high school and elementary schools. However, it appears that no school
buildings were ever built in these areas. Instead, one of more
residential bocks were likely used for schools. The caption of a June
1944 photograph of a general-purpose auditorium indicates it was only
recently completed (Figure 7.9). On WRA blueprints Block 22 is labeled
as the "church and store area," but the buildings listed there include
only a fire house, a pumping station, and a water storage tank.

The sewage treatment plant was located about one-half
mile east of the residential area. A 1943 WRA blueprint shows a cemetery
just inside the perimeter fence in the southwest corner of the
relocation center, but reportedly the cemetery was never used.

Outside the fenced central area the evacuees cleared
land for farming, dug ditches, and built bridges (Figures 7.10 and
7.11). Many of the trees cleared were put to use: between July 1943 and
February 1944, Jerome produced over 280,000 board feet of lumber and
over 6,000 cords of firewood (Figure 7.12).

The Jerome and Rohwer relocation centers grew 85 percent of their own
vegetables (Figure 7.13; Bearden 1989). In 1943, 630 acres were put
under cultivation at Jerome. In 1944, 718 acres were under cultivation,
200 additional acres were cleared but not farmed, and several hundred
more acres were partially cleared (Denson Tribune
Communiqué 2/22/44).

Over 1,200 hogs were raised by the evacuees for
consumption at the center. The hog farm location is not known, but it
likely utilized an existing farm within the relocation center reserve. A
map in the Denson Tribune Communiqué (3/9/43) shows 37
houses within the reserve, most east of Big Bayou along a north-south
road(now State Highway 293).

Four miles east of the residential area the evacuees
built a 45-acre scout campsite. Three five-room buildings near the camp
site were used as a scout headquarters and field houses.

After the relocation center was closed in 1944 it was
converted into a Prisoner of War camp for Germans, although the POWs
were confined to the central area and did not work the surrounding
fields. All of Block 1 was occupied by a German general captured at the
Battle of the Bulge and his orderlies. Another block was isolated from
the rest of the camp to house SS troops. Two German POWs who escaped
later turned themselves in (John Ellington, personal communication,
1994).